This online exhibit on the history of social dance in America draws on documents in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society to offer a multi-faceted portrait of the changing nature of American social dance. Items in the exhibit include the cotillion, the quadrille, and other related square dance forms.

František Bonuš, a noted dance pedagogue from Prague, led a quadrille workshop in Berea, Kentucky in 1987. The video of the entire workshop is lengthy and has been edited and divided into nine parts. This is Part 1 and shows figures from the Czech quadrille, Beseda, a dance in eight parts. The date of composition for the dance is in…

(To open the PDF document, click on the underlined link to the right.)This overview of square dance history focuses on two major groups of square dance. One group (northern, Eastern, Maritime, etc.) relies on quadrille-style figures, with couples interacting across the set; this style is prompted like a contra. The second form is found in the…

In this poem, c. 1822, we see that it's the squires from the countryside of England who prefer the stately Miss Quadrille, while others are initially enamored of the charms of that newcomer from France, Mademoiselle Quadrille.

This dance was taught by Tony Parkes as part of his workshop session on New England Square Dances, recorded November 19, 2011, at the Dare To Be Square Weekend, John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC. Co-sponsored by the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS), the event brought together six experienced callers representing different styles of…

Michael Bergman: Sadly, they've substituted walking steps for the more difficult Regency-era style steps that were still in fashion when the music was written. They are correctly using the older French formation of lines of couples facing couples across the set, with no progression, which predates the four-couple quadrille. On the positive side,…

This dance starts with the Grand Square figure, along with other calls common to the 5th figure of the Lancers.Edson Cole was a fiddler and dancing master from Freedom, NH. He was documentedby Eloise Hubbard Linscott in her 1939 book, Folk Songs of Old New England. This 78 rpm recording was made available to Dudley Laufman, who released it with…

This manuscript of sixty-five dance tunes was handed down through several generations of the Haynes, Shuck, and Adams families who came West over the Oregon Trail from Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa and Missouri between 1847 and 1853. Many of the family members were musical, and over the years several people contributed tunes to the manuscript, from which…

Between 1972 and 1974, Ralph Page wrote a series of essays entitled A History of Square Dancing. For ease in downloading, we have collected them into "chapters" that group together similar topics. The essays were published in the magazine Square Dancing as follows:Dancing In New England 11/1972The Revolutionary Era 1/1973Direct Ancestors…

Honest John is an unusual dance that was greatly admired by Ralph Page. An accompanying video shows it being danced by a group that includes some members of the Ed Larkin dancers. This file presents some background information on the dance as well as a selection of Ralph Page's comments on the dance.

Traditional quadrille, recorded at an open house sponsored by the Ed Larkin Dancers, Tunbridge, Vermont, March 12, 2010. The prompter is Adam Boyce, and the musicians are Harold Luce on fiddle and his daughter, Donna Weston, on piano.

This dance was taught by Tony Parkes as part of his workshop session on New England Square Dances, recorded November 19, 2011, at the Dare To Be Square Weekend, John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC. Co-sponsored by the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS), the event brought together six experienced callers representing different styles of…

Dance Discovery, a St Louis, Missouri troupe, dances all five figures at a Lincoln program given at Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville on November 25, 2007. The dance is included in Lincoln's 1861 inaugural ball.